hollywood

China has managed to create an AI that has made Hollywood tremble. Disney has not been amused at all

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The phenomenon of the month in AI is Seedance 2.0. To date, the most amazing text-to-video creation model and theard a dart at the same industry from Hollywood. So much so that Disney itself has legally warned Bytedance, the Chinese giant behind this model. The notice. Sources of Reuters They claim that Disney has sent a cease and desist letter to Bytedance, accusing the Chinese company of having used company characters to train its Seedance 2.0 model. According to statements, Bytedance would have created a package of copyrighted characters to feed this artificial intelligence, the main reason why it is so accurate at recreating them. Bytedance’s response. The Chinese company has not acknowledged having used copyrighted characters to train its model, but it has reacted to Disney’s notice. “We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users.” Beyond the statement, the company has not detailed what measures it is taking to prevent users from distributing copyrighted content, such as the one we have been seeing flooding the network for two weeks. They are not the first. Disney has already taken similar measures against Character.AIan AI specialized in creating animated characters capable of perfectly emulating Disney characters. The company It only has an alliance with OpenAIwith whom he signed an agreement so that Sora could generate more than 200 characters thanks to a three-year license. The operation included a $1 billion investment by Disney in OpenAI. Doors to the countryside. “Creative prompt engineering” and code modifications to make AI bypass the very limitations for which it is programmed are inevitable, in addition to all the derived Open-Source models that can be trained outside the jurisdiction. The key here is not in the dispute between Disney and Bytedance, it is that China has created the first model that directly threatens the creation of cinematographic content. Join the enemy. For some time now, the film industry has been clear that the coming years they will be cuts and embrace of AI. CEOs like Sony have already spoken out and positioned themselves as “very focused on AI”, making it clear that the current problem for movies is expense. Models like Seedance now allow us to generate in minutes what previously required entire teams and million-dollar budgets. In the coming years, video generation models will force the industry to rethink its cost structure. In Xataka | We are entering a new era of robotics driven by AI and Disney is its perfect showcase

Sydney Sweeney inaugurates the post-woke era of Hollywood

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Nobody would bet on an erotic thriller starring a maid in 2025, but ‘The Housemaid’ has shown that Hollywood can still surprise when it recovers genres that seemed buried. The film directed by Paul Feig has raised more than 137 million dollars against a modest budget of 35 million, becoming the unexpected success of Christmas. And that success says a lot about the political moment that Hollywood is going through. Immediate success. The success was so overwhelming that Lionsgate confirmed a sequel just 17 days after its releasesomething unheard of in today’s industry. The fascinating thing is that ‘The Maid’ does not invent anything: it unapologetically recovers the recipe of the nineties erotic thriller with its triangle of sex, money and deadly secrets. As Some critics have pointed out the film “proves that dead Hollywood genres still have life” if executed with conviction. For Sydney Sweeney, this triumph is especially significant after the failures of ‘Christy’ and ‘Eden’, which They threatened to derail his career just when he seemed to begin to establish himself as a star. Anatomy of an extinct genus. The erotic thriller was born as a mass phenomenon in 1987, when ‘Fatal Attraction’, with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas, raised more than 320 million dollars and spent eight weeks at number one at the box office. Five years later, ‘Basic Instinct’ raised the stakes with Sharon Stone and again Michael Douglas throwing us some of the most high-voltaic scenes ever seen on screen. It raised 353 million. He secret of the formula It was a mix of noir classic and explicit sex, with luxury mansions, a reformulation of the trope of femme fatale and continuous plot twists. The death of the genre. The fever unleashed an avalanche of more than 700 movies direct to video between 1985 and 2005, while screenwriters like Joe Eszterhas (of ‘Basic Instinct’) became millionaires. At the end of the nineties, the genre collapsed due to market saturation and because The arrival of the Internet democratized access to pornographyeliminating the need to look for eroticism in cinema mainstream. Until now there has been no possibility of resurrection for the genre because the post-cultural cultural changes#MeToo They made the genre’s tropes (dangerous women punished for leading uncontrolled, unconventional and, above all, undomesticated) sexual lives problematic. The (boring) icing on the cake: Hollywood reoriented its films towards family franchises that could be sold in conservative markets like China. Perpetual recycling. The film industry works like a cemetery with revolving doors: genres never completely die, they just hibernate, waiting for their moment. Romantic comedies seemed extinct last decade, victims of Marvel, until Sydney Sweeney herself raised $220 million in 2023 with ‘Anyone But You’. We have seen it before countless times: ‘Django Unchained’ became the the highest grossing western in historyand from those muds these ‘Yellowstone’. The musicals returned with ‘La La Land’ in 2016, and there we have its successor ‘Wicked’ as one of the sensations of the moment. For its part, nostalgia for modest budget horror It has gone from fashion to phenomenon. The cycle of life. And the pattern repeats itself: a genre is born, reaches saturation, collapses due to excess and exhaustion of the formula, disappears for 15 or 25 years, and is resurrected when a new generation rediscovers it without the negative stigma of saturation. The key is about creating hybrids that incorporate contemporary sensibilities into classic DNA, and streaming has accelerated this process, as platforms like Netflix allow experimentation outside the traditional systemwith less financial risk, since it can refer to niches that traditional studies ignore. The post-woke moment. December 2024 marked a turning point when two major publications (The New York Times and The Telegraph) simultaneously declared that Hollywood had entered a “post-woke era.” The NYT article was especially blunt in dismissing the last decade of diverse stories, celebrating that “we no longer have to pretend to like something just because it has the right politics.” The 2025 box office data confirms the diagnosis: the productions that have triumphed at the box office (‘Lilo & Stitch‘, ‘Zootopia 2’, ‘A Minecraft movie‘, ‘Avatar 3‘) are absolutely harmless in that sense. ‘The Assistant’ is a twist that goes even further in this trend. The film recovers archetypes that the era of political correctness had left behind: femme fatale seductive without feminist justification, explicit sexuality without any type of pedagogy, class conflict dressed in the garb of a thriller without a message. There are no characters written to capture demographics, just a dirty story (with no minority representation) about money, power and betrayal. Sweeney’s presence, raised a few months ago as anti-woke icon It’s not exactly coincidental. The lesson of the market. ‘The Housemaid’ confirms that what is old is new again when the public is hungry for something that the industry no longer offers. The female audience (which represents more than 55% of viewers of the film) has shown that there is a demand for sophisticated adult content that is not superheroes or family animation. While ‘Avatar 3’ and ‘Zootopia 2’ dominated with budgets in the hundreds of millions, ‘The Housemaid’ billed 133 million occupying a space without competition. The question that remains is whether we are facing a structural change or simply another passing cycle. Sydney Sweeney accumulates now three consecutive years with at least one commercial success per year (‘Anyone but you’, ‘Immaculata’, ‘The maid’), which suggests that he has found a formula. If ‘The Housemaid’s Secret’, the sequel, generates a viable franchise, it will have managed to revive a dead genre. Hollywood Cemetery, after all, has always been more of a warehouse than a definitive grave. In Xataka | We Spaniards have stopped watching TV, going to the cinema and reading books: the only thing that interests us is going to concerts

Parmersan cheese is extremely serious business in Italy. To the point of having his own agent in Hollywood

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The most famous cheese in the world (with permission from Cabrales) has just hired representation in Hollywood. The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium (which is what the Italians call what we simply call Parmesan) has signed United Talent Agency (UTA), one of the leading agencies in the film industry, to boost the presence of the Italian product in films, television series and platforms streaming on an international scale. The agreement. The strategy seeks to position this cheese with a Protected Designation of Origin in global productions in a more or less natural way, taking advantage of the fact that it is known throughout the world. According to statements by Carmine Forbuso, marketing manager of the Italian organization, the cheese represents “simplicity, quality and depth” thanks to only three ingredients, all natural, and centuries of tradition in its artisanal production. Exports of the product reached 53.2% in the first eight months of 2025. How’s the thing going? product placement. The global advertising placement market reached $33 billion in 2024 with a growth of 12.3% annually, which far exceeds the increase in traditional advertising investment. This marketing strategy has been experiencing four consecutive years of double-digit expansion, and as a marketing strategy it has doubled in size compared to 2018, so no, we are not just talking about the jar of soluble cocoa in ‘Family Doctor’. Specialized agencies as UTA ​​Entertainment Marketingwhich will represent parmesan, have doubled revenue in two years. And it seems to work: the success of this tactic lies in its naturalness, since more than 52% of US consumers They prefer these appearances over conventional advertisements. Some precedents in Hollywood. The history of product placement modern food has its founding moment in 1982when candy brand Reese’s Pieces focused all the attention on a crucial scene from Spielberg’s ‘ET.’ Mars refused to allow M&M’s to be used and it was quite a mistake, as Hershey, makers of Reese’s Pieces, tripled sales in two weeks. Currently it is a popular resource: in 2024, for exampleCoca-Cola appeared in 561 films and series. When it goes wrong. However, the forced placement It often generates rejection, and it is something that brands have to take into account. The oldest people in the place remember with a shudder the movie ‘My Friend Mac’ (curiously, a plagiarism of ‘ET’), full of covert advertising for Pepsi and MacDonald’s, and in whose restaurants even a musical number took place. When the brand interrupts the logical narrative of the film The viewer perceives it as invasive advertising, and that is what happened in this classic of eighties alien dandruff. Header | Brands&People in Unsplash In Xataka | Italy’s forbidden dish: a cheese so extreme in its preparation that the European Union had to put limits on it

There is an industry losing 42,000 jobs and bleeding before us: Hollywood

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The entertainment industry in Los Angeles is going through its worst crisis in decadeswith a dizzying drop in the number of productions and jobs, which has caused a feeling of “economic disaster” in the creative heart of California. It seems like a well-known story that we recover cyclically every few years, but this time some abysmal figures, never seen before, accompany: the media have detected how companies are entering a real emergency situation. Are we contemplating Hollywood’s last great crisis? Two years of chaos. According to The Wall Street Journalthe crisis that Hollywood is going through not only affects the large studios and production companies, but also has an impact on thousands of indirect jobs and the commercial fabric of the city: restaurants, technical services, prop stores and housing have seen how the activity linked to film and television is drastically reduced. In the last two years, more than 40,000 jobs have been lost in the sector, leaving animators, technicians, scriptwriters, operators and small businesses in a precarious situation, and raising the local unemployment rate above the state and national average.​ Some data. These 40,000 direct jobs disappeared represent a drop of more than 20% of the sector’s total. With this, the unemployment rate in Los Angeles County for industry professionals has reached 5.7%, exceeding not only the state average of California (5.5%) but also the national average of the United States, around 4.3%. All this has led to a drop in local production to historical record numberswith a decrease of at least 30% in film and television projects recorded in Los Angeles, continuously since 2023.​ And how is that reflected for practical purposes? In it production exodus: The number of Hollywood projects filming outside of California, primarily in states with more competitive tax incentives such as Georgia and New Mexico, has risen 25%.​ The signal from the sets. The occupation of the Hollywood sets It is perhaps the clearest sign of how the area’s economy has fallen. In 2024, the average occupancy of sets in Los Angeles fell to a historic 63%, a significant decrease from the average of more than 90% that remained constant between 2016 and 2022. And there is another fact: only 20% of the activity on sets was destined for television, down from 30% in previous years. The cause, as we will see below, is the reduction in expenses that the platforms of streamingimmersed in extreme savings policies.​ But why does it happen? First of all, prolonged strikes of scriptwriters and actors since 2023, which paralyzed a good part of local production, generating million-dollar losses and discouraging new investments from being generated. Added to this is the considerable increase in the cost of living and production in Los Angeles, which has led many studios and production companies to seek alternative destinations with tax incentives and more attractive subsidies, such as those mentioned above, Canada or other emerging markets.​ Another significant cause is the transformation of the entertainment economic modelparticularly with the proliferation of platforms streaming. These platforms, faced with market saturation and pressure to maintain profitability, have reduced their budgets and the number of projectstaking away part of the total production volume in Los Angeles. The combination of lower demand and budgetary adjustments has pushed the industry into a prolonged contraction.​ And finally, there is the emergence of artificial intelligencewith its challenge to traditional labor, especially in fields such as animation, visual effects and post-production. And now what. To begin with, an immediate effect: The position of the United States as a global leader in audiovisual production is in danger. Not only are a significant number of productions moving to other regions and even countries, attracted by better fiscal conditions, lower costs and cheaper technical equipment. It is that thanks to the globalization of entertainment that has brought streamingticket offices like those in Korea or China They are no longer secondary. This week’s highest-grossing film worldwide it has been an anime. The animation phenomenon of the year has been a k-pop idol movie. The throne is more disputed than ever. Header | Braden Egli in Unsplash In Xataka | While Hollywood goes through a slump, one film industry is constantly filling theaters: the Chinese one

Cameron’s ‘Titanic’ was going to be a flop. Until a trailer that broke several Hollywood rules changed the narrative

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In a few weeks the posthumous memoirs of Jon Landau, producer of ‘Titanic‘ and ‘Avatar‘, and frequent collaborator of James Cameron. Media as Variety have been able to access its content, and they tell of a masterful marketing maneuver: how a film that seemed doomed to failure, ‘Titanic’, was saved thanks to an intelligent trailer. It was sinking. Before the release of ‘Titanic’ In 1997, there was a certain pessimism in Hollywood and in the press about the film’s chances of success. With a then-record budget of $200 million, constant delays during filming, and negative rumors about the development of the production, many experts and media assumed that the film would be a financial disaster. Landau says that he was famous an article from ‘Time’ magazine in which the possible future of the film was compared to the real fate of the ship with the onomatopoeia “Glub, Glub, Glub…” Too much noise. But as he says in his memoirs, titled ‘The Bigger Picture’, Landau knew that “perception becomes reality”, even though expectations were not good: the jump from 100 to 200 million dollars brought to mind another major failure (and with a very marked aquatic component as well): ‘Waterworld’ by Kevin Costner. Paramount’s marketing team proposed a conventional trailer. Landau described it as a “John Woo-style trailer”, meaning “quick cuts and booming music, gunshots and screams. It made the movie look like an action movie that just happened to take place on the Titanic.” Cameron and Landau knew this wasn’t their movie. Four minutes or so. The decision they made was seemingly counterintuitive: an exceptionally long trailer, four minutes and two seconds. Before, they had to fight for a long time with Paramount executives, who initially wanted a shorter trailer oriented solely towards action. Landay and Cameron argued that a longer trailer was necessary to convey the magnitude and complex narrative of Titanic. They presented it at the ShoWest event in Las Vegas, a key convention for theater owners. Kurt likes it. The trailer had an immediate and favorable effect among attendees, decisive for the good distribution of the film. It also had a positive impact on stars like Kurt Russell, who helped spread the word that they were watching a great film. The actor, sitting at the Paramount table, stood up and shouted, “I’d pay ten dollars just to see that trailer again.” Since then, even the initially skeptical press began to reconsider the film, marking a turning point in public perception and hopes for commercial success. Change in narrative. The trailer not only showed what no one had seen and how the film worked (the memories, the romance, the action, the gigantic scale), but it also redefined the conversation from rumors of failure to raising the possibility of it being a success. The film was released in December 1997, became the highest-grossing film of all time and won 11 Oscars. Another victory for Cameron, although with this one he didn’t have it with him all the time. In Xataka | The “ghost” category of the Oscars: it exists but it is so demanding that there have never been films that compete for it

The most watched film in history on television is not a Hollywood success, but a classic from the most carpet-loving Spain

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You will have heard on more than one occasion that every time ‘Pretty Woman’ is broadcast on television, audiences skyrocket. Nowadays it is no longer so true: Telecinco broadcast it a couple of days ago and the result It wasn’t spectacular.. In any case, not even the film by Richard Gere and Julia Roberts has come to live up to what is the greatest milestone in television cinema: the most viewed film in history in Spain has nothing Hollywood about it. Neither cathete nor cathete. On January 14, 1992 (that is, with the private ones already at full capacity, but still unable to stand up to depending on the customs of the Spanish viewer), the broadcast on La 1 of ‘Cateto a port’ had an average audience of 10,078,000 viewers and a stratospheric share 60.5% (for comparison, the final of the last Copa del Rey, the most watched in years, it didn’t reach 50%and the daily program that exceeds 15% is rare). Tremendous landism. ‘Cateto a port’ is a 1970 Spanish comedy starring Alfredo Landa. In it, a simple young man, after multiple attempts to avoid military service in order to take care of his little brother, ends up joining the Navy, having to face multiple difficulties due to his lack of experience. The film uses simple humor for all audiences, contrasting the naive protagonist (the recruit Cañete, whose name will soon become iconic) and the highly regulated environment of the Navy. All seasoned, of course, with its mild military propaganda, showing the modernity and friendliness of the institutions. Why do you like ‘Cateto a port’? His conciliatory tone, so typical of the last years of the Franco dictatorship, guaranteed him notable box office success, and above all, as with other stars of the time such as Paco Martínez Soria, the favor of the public. Its comedy of manners with a very friendly tone makes ‘Cateto a port’ very digestible by audiences of all ages, just what brought ten million people to the television screen. The most aggressive landismo was yet to come, full of plots with Spanish boys chasing Swedish women among images of medium intensity eroticism. It would be inaugurated, precisely, that same 1970 with a film by the same director, ‘You will not desire the neighbor on the fifth floor’. Relative milestone. Of course, we are talking about an absolute record… since there have been measurements, something that started in Spain in 1986. In 1992, audiences had already atomized due to private ones, so it is possible to think that in the seventies and eighties, when the population’s primary entertainment was television, the audiences for other films (or even this one) could have been much larger. Before measuring with audiometers, The audience was measured through the General Media Study (EGM) since 1968, which used interviews to estimate consumption. Other successes. There are only four feature films registered that have exceeded 9 million on average: the humorous western by Clint Eastwood and Shirley McLaine ‘Two Mules and a Woman’, with 9,598,000; the tremendous ‘The Priest’s Son’ by Fernando Esteso, with 9,287,000 spectators; We were talking about ‘Pretty Woman’ and there it is, with 9,223,000 viewers; and finally, ‘Dirty Dancing’ with 9,110,000 viewers. Be careful, because they are all broadcasts from 1992 (with the exception of ‘Pretty Woman’, from 1994), which suggests that, despite the arrival of private broadcasts, there was a general increase in people watching television in the early nineties.

Spaniards who make special effects for Hollywood tell us about AI

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We already had clear that Spain has become indisputable superpower of the comic mainstream United States. It is not only there that ours are triumphing internationally. By the Comic-with Malaga Many of those responsible for the VFX study were passed The ranch To break down its spectacular curriculum, and we had the opportunity to talk to two of its members, Isaac de la Pompa and Sofia Balestrini. With your help We take the pulse of the state of the special effects in Spain and review its trajectory: The Ranchito was founded in 2004 by Félix Bergés and since then has become a European and global leader in VFX, with more than 200 employees. Among the films and series in which they have participated are ‘The Snow Society’, ‘A monster comes to see me’, ‘Jurassic World: the fallen kingdom’, ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Stranger Things’, ‘The Mandalorian’ or ‘Westworld’. All success races have a turning point, and in the case of El Ranchito, it was ‘the impossible’ of Juan Antonio Bayona. We ask how your meeting was with the director of ‘The snow society‘: “Bayonne had already worked with Félix Bergés in’ The orphanage ‘and had him again. The effects became very Old School, With real water, and the result was so good that they came to call us no less than ilm (George Lucas’s effect company) to make a projection of the film. “ What impressed so much to the geniuses of the effects of Industrial Light & Magic? “It was shot in a Valencia pool. We bought a computer specialized in making water, waves and that type of fluids, but there is not a pixel on the screen. The only thing we retouched was the foam of the top of the waves, which is a mixture of real image and effects generated by computer.” When the film opens, it sweeps at the box office worldwide. “And above all, the Best Supporting Effects prize of the visual Effects Society in 2013 wins.” And from there, El Ranchito’s phone does not stop sounding. It is a before and after: “Before that, Felix had tried by all means to enter the American market, without getting it. An occasional interview, and nothing more. But the prize made the difference.” The prize and the price recognize: “Here we were more cheaper than those of Los Angeles. It was still a time when in Los Angeles there was labor (now everything is already democalized around the world), and it was much cheaper to take things to us.” For example, ‘Game of Thrones‘. “Chapter eight of season five, which we were not sure how to dobut we accepted because Felix had a lot of value, he accepted everything. I would not have dared. “Before, from HBO they made sure:” They made us a previous exam, they sent us a plan of season 4 in which some skeletons came out and told us ‘take, animated, compose it and others’ “. They had courage, but HBO too: “Suddenly they had to get out of their comfort zone, put aside all the American, Canadian and English companies, and have a Spanish company that had not done a project of that size.” When Ranchito had a good coil of international projects, important orders followed. ‘The Mandalorian’, without going any further: “There were effects that ILM did not give time to finish, and they called us. Above all we made ships of ships.” And he gave them chance to meet an idol: “And of course, we had call with John Knoll (Creative Director of ILM, responsible for the effects of innumerable films with the company since 1989), which is a very rare feeling, being in a videoconference with such a reference. “ The future of special effects The next question is inevitable: How do you see the future of the sector, especially with the arrival of artificial intelligence tools? “At the moment there is no total change, but tools have appeared that facilitate the work, in microtheses that simply make the artist’s life a little simpler. For example, making a mask is a laborious task that before had to make frame by frame, and now there are models that do it automatically.” Nor is the panacea at the moment, they warn: “Then you have to retouch, you have to refine, but the progress is there” “But in general,” they tell us, “there will be a paradigm shift, it is the absolute future. Some professions such as 3D modelers are going to die and they will have to convert to other things.” And yet, “there are limitations.” What kind of limitations? Techniques (“In some aspects that seem unimportant details when generating images, AI is still very green”), but above all legal and use: “Lionsgate has reached an agreement with Runway to feed with a 20,000 films of which they have rights and be able to generate new ‘legal’ productions with AI. It is insufficient, they need many more references to create something with meaning.” That is to say, The current IAS are so sophisticated because they “cheat” in that sense: “Google and other IAS are based on millions and millions of references that take without permission, and that is why the videos are so sophisticated. We cannot do that, and legally we are now in anyone’s land.” Technology exists, the intention exists, but the logical legal maze of power or not being able to use images without permission is such a caliber that we may take years to see how this tangle is faded. In Xataka | What is the work of an artist of visual effects, in the words of Carolina Jiménez (‘Marvel’, ‘El Hobbit’, ‘Cosmos’ …)

Between franchises, action and superheroes Hollywood has found a surprising gold mine: horror movies

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14.4% of the American box office already belongs to horror movies. It is its historical maximum and a great leap from 9.8% of last year confirming what we already suspected: the damn genre has become an unexpected hero of Hollywood. ‘Weapons‘, the last success of director Zach Cregger, has debuted with $ 42.5 million collected and 100% critical approval in Rotten Tomatoes. The pattern is confirmed. Why is it important. The era of streaming has created the perfect conditions for this genre: Cheap productions, between 5 and 30 million compared to 200 of a Blockbuster. Viral by its very nature. Consumed in the intimacy of the home, where no one judges you for shouting (when they reach the platforms). Simple equation: Less investment, greater return. The contrast. In 2021, the best previous year for the genre, dominated the sequelae. ‘Halloween’, ‘A Quiet Place’. Now the original stories, new scares. Six horror films have exceeded 50 million worldwide this year. There are 29 horror launches scheduled for 2025. The average budget is a tenth of a Blockbuster traditional. Yes, but. The industry fears an early saturation. Variety I already talked in April of ‘Horror Glut’ (‘Terror Empacho’). The risk is to turn fear into routine and end up tireding the viewer too early. In perspective. Historically, terror is the Hollywood refuge genre in times of crisis. In the great depression it was when the classic monsters of Universal were born. In the seventies (Vietnam, Watergate), they arrived ‘The exorcist‘ and ‘The Matanza de Texas‘. There were also rebounds in Pandemia. Today, with the industry staggering between The strike hangoverthe change of model towards the streaming And the threat of AI, terror is the answer again. Cheap to produce, easy to sell, impossible to ignore. And now what. The generative AI can be the following revolution of the genre. Special effects at balance price, scripts generated by trained algorithms in our deepest fears. Terror, which has always been the most honest genre about the human condition, could be the first to hug the AI without complexes. Fear sells. He has always done it. But now, also saves balances. In Xataka | More ads for less money: the equation of success that Netflix has deciphered big Outstanding image | Warner Bros. Pictures

This is what Hollywood saturation model seeks

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We know that feeling: Pedro Pascal seems to be appearing in all the films of the world. In all important, at least: you just saw it in ‘The Last of Us‘And you already have it in’The fantastic 4‘. And within nothing, in the movie of ‘The Mandalorian‘. And the worst thing is not that it comes out in movies and series, it is that it continually jumps on the Internet: microvideos, spots, interviews, viral. And paradoxically, guilt is not yours, but how Hollywood works today. An busy man. Let us recognize that Pascal is an authentic stove of acting, and since he rose in ‘Narcos’, he has not stopped chaining important roles: from 2019, ‘The Mandalorian’ (although he did not see his face), three series in 2021, ‘The last of us’ since 2023. And in cinema, three films in 2022, five in 2024 ‘Gladiator II‘), three in 2025 (the new of Ari Aster, the commented – Spain arrives in August -‘ materialistic ‘and the aforementioned’ the fantastic 4). And for at least 2026, he plans his interventions in the Star Wars and Marvel franchises. Why everywhere. Pascal’s career lives a “global star” effect thanks to being present in those three great franchises of the moment (Marvel, ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Last of Us’). Thus it has become one of the most recognizable and popular faces of the industry, and it is not the result of chance, but a combination of indisputable talent and a natural charism that makes him connect with the audience both on screen and outside it (that’s why we are also seeing it in ads such as Apple’s directed by Spike Jonze). His sense of humor It has generated genuine empathy, contributing to a nearby image. Franchise world. Hollywood lives immersed in a production model that tries to reduce financial risks by force of Set off any glimpse of experimentation. The huge production costs force great studies to focus on established franchises, something that the box office supports with results as clear as last year, where The ten higher films were all sequelsremakes and derivatives. And therefore, actors like Pedro Pascal They become omnipresent: They embody characters in these universes and acquire enormous visibility by becoming key pieces. Saturation logic. The promotion of these franchises has evolved towards a model of Constant presence in all channels. Studies use aggressive strategies (Fragmented interviewsstaggered content launches, incessant activity in social networks like Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube) … what makes The public can perceive that they are receiving without stop stimuli related to franchises. The great injured are actors like Pedro Pascal, giving the feeling of appearing everywhere but unable to control that cadence. Lack of relief. Parallel to this logic of maximizing the exposure of the IP to keep it alive we have another phenomenon: there are no generational relays among the interpreters. Of course, there are new young actors, but many young actors They leave the industry due to lack of opportunities. The Post-pandemic austerity policy It prevents us from living phenomena such as those of the 80s, the 90s or the first two thousands, when they walked from young actors led each generation. As a producer affirms in This article The Hollywood Reporter, “Hollywood has spent too much time making franchises the star instead of building the next talent generation. We have not encouraged writers to create vehicles that generate stars.” The lack of risk on the part of the producers also affects this issue: they want the delivery to be full of safe values, without space for doubts. Always the same, always Pedro Pascal. Header | Disney In Xataka | The figures suggest that the domain of blockbusters in Hollywood is not over. In fact, it will go worse

The figures suggest that the domain of blockbusters in Hollywood is not over. In fact, it will go worse

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In the post-pandemic Hollywood that we live, of completely consolidated cycles and trends, commercial cinema reigns at its expression: sequelae, remakes, reboots and blockbusters that do not leave space to medium and small movies. And although one might think that it is a passing situation with a visos to change, the truth is that such a panorama (at first glance, a transition state) does not stop consolidating. The figures. Let’s look at a few figures, which Pau Brunet gives in Your Newsletter Box Office Alchemy: During the first semester of 2025, the five highest grossing films in the United States have concentrated 82% of income. It is a rise in that domain if we compare it, for example, with 2019, when those five films generated 75%. At first glance the figures do not seem to indicate excessive growth, but let’s look at the rest of the movies. Top 6-10 represents 11.7% of the box office, a 35% drop compared to 2019. And beyond Top 10, the figures are abysmal: they represent 6.3% of the income, a 53% drop. That without counting the general fall of income (which shows that this domination of a few films is not the panacea): in these first six months, those first five films have generated 22% less income than in 2019. And what does it mean. That as much as we rabiem and kick because last year The ten most viewed films were all sequelsremakes, reboots and several fritas (not even ‘WICKED‘He escaped, being how is the adaptation of a musical inspired by a book that, in turn, is based on’ The Wizard of Oz ‘), is what works and is what the public demands. A few months ago We contemplated stunned How Disney Barría at the box office with ‘Lilo & Stitch’, and this week we have The premiere of ‘Superman’to which the first box office figures (at the time of writing these lines, the presale of Thursday) predict a great result. We can celebrate the success of unusual bets as ‘sinners’ (which Apparently it will not become franchise), But it is still a drop in the ocean, an absolute rarity in the current context. Problems for indies. Of course, this points to severe problems for the indie sector of cinematographic production, and that is increasingly cornering in the billboards. Brunet himself spoke In a previous newsletter of the aid that in Hollywood are taking place, by producers’ coalitions, to the cinema that does not have the support of the great studies. And this is going to be the only way for independent cinema, authentic basic oxygen for industry, continues to exist, because the dynamics of distribution have it marginalized. The rooms: horror, horror … The figures are clear, but you just have to go to any room to check the absolute domination of the cinema mainstreamto which the brutal is added Shortage of exhibition windowsin search of rapid benefits: after a few weeks in rooms the films go to PPV, and from there to streaming. And start again in a dynamic that not only burns products at infernal speeds, but also admits anything that is not blockbusters. The Terabusters. Brunet puts a name to this phenomenon: Terabusters. A step beyond the blockbusters, like Kaijus of cinema, the movies already They are not blockbusters, but events that bring together all the efforts of a producer for months … and hopefully return that effort in the form of dividends that allow them to finance the following monster. But you have to take care of the cinema base fabric, or the industry is in danger of devouring itself, or working only based on movies that we saw ten years ago (or less). Header | Warner In Xataka | There are many people who hate Santiago Segura movies. The problem is that they “save” Spanish cinema every year

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